August 22, 2011

Recipe for slow cooker vegan lentil and chickpea soup

While looking for inspiration in my pantry last week, I discovered a long-forgotten bag of small brown lentils, the kind you buy in bulk at Indian grocery stores. I had canned chickpeas on the shelf, too, and a vision of a brown-on-brown soup came to me. Cumin, garam masala, turmeric and cayenne pepper kept the soup in the same color palette, and some fresh cilantro added at the end provided contrast in both hue and taste. If you have a good strong mushroom or vegetable stock in your freezer, you can use that as the broth. And if you're not vegan, top the soup with a bit of yogurt when you serve.